Coffee Bean

The past four days my diet has consisted of turkey, potatoes (mashed, roasted, no skin), cranberry sauce (thank goodness), rice cakes and crackers, and peach fruit cups. I mentioned in the last post that I had to go have an allergy test, to de-bunk some of my stomach issues I have been having as of late. Well, turns out I’m allergic to pretty much everything. The allergy test was done on my forearms, and I reacted to basically every allergen they introduced. I already knew I had really bad hay-fever, as my allergies were unbearable as a teen during the spring and summer. My grass allergy is out of control, which affects things like wheat that is in the grass family. I knew I was allergic to dairy, so no milk, or eggs, or only egg whites and fully cooked, not runny. So, I’m on a food elimination diet. Only eating those foods I mentioned, and then starting this week slowly introducing other foods to rule out which ones I am allergic to. Hopefully at the end of it I will know exactly what I can and cannot eat so that I don’t continue having stomach issues.

Having a dairy allergy, the last thing I would be eating is ice cream. And, unfortunately I am not. Adam bought me an Ice Cream Maker Attachment for my KitchenAid last Christmas, which I have only used once. Adam calls it the $100 ice cream, since it cost about that much to make it one time. So, I thought I had better get my money’s worth out of it. Last time I did make ice cream that used coconut milk and almond milk with only a small amount of cream and egg. So I did eat that, it was not as hard as ice cream but still just as delicious. This time, I thought I would make a true ice cream, considering I can’t eat it anyways. Lucky Adam.

I was trying to contemplate which flavour to make this time, and settled on Coffee. Why? Maybe because all that has been on my mind lately is Coffee Tables. If you follow me on Twitter you’ll have heard me lamenting about it. Since I moved in with Adam over a year and a half ago (wow! can’t believe It’s been that long) we have purchased some new furniture, and accessories. We have painted our bathroom, from ugly orange to pale grey, put moulding around the giant mirror, painted our kitchen white, and recently painted our bedroom a rich romantic charcoal grey. There have been a lot of changes, and many still to come. One thing I really want, now, is a coffee table. Adam never bought one when he moved in, and we just never bothered. He had three small ottomans, black leather that are hollow for storage. They line up in a row, and that is pretty much our table. While they are good for resting your feet, they suck at being a table. We put a couple trays on top, but it’s not quite the same as a coffee table. I usually put my water glass on the ground next to my chair, which Adam then accidentally kicks over without fail.

We have been trolling craiglist, but quite honeslty it’s too annoying. Almost every item on there is from Ikea, and we already have enough apartment-Ikea items. I LOVE this table from Urban Barn, however I do not love the $500 price tag. We have visited thrift stores, and other furniture stores but have yet to find something quite like it that catches our eye. Adam has said he would probably be able to make a table that looks like the one we like, so for now I have hope that one day we will actually have a coffee table. I also have my eye on a DIY headboard… I hope Ice Cream is a a fair enough trade for handy-man duties ;)

While I do not drink coffee, I do love coffee-flavoured things. I am just not a coffee drinker. I have never really tried a full cup, but know I do not like it. I’ll drink tea, but it’s not a daily thing for me. I stick to my ice water. Coffee Ice Cream is delicious, especially this recipe. I also added some chocolate stracciatella, which is like Italian chocolate chips. You add melted hot chocolate to the ice cream, and it breaks apart into strata-like chocolate shavings. You can drizzle it on top, and break the hardened chocolate lines into chunks, or pour warm melted chocolate into your mixer which will also break it up into shavings.

This is a rich intense coffee flavour. Definitely good for both coffee and non-coffee lovers alike.

Directions:

1 Heat the milk, sugar, whole coffee beans and 1/2 cup of the cream in a medium saucepan until it is quite warm and steamy, but not boiling. Once the mixture is warm, cover, remove from the heat, and let steep at room temperature for 1 hour.

2 Pour the remaining 1 cup of cream into a medium size metal bowl, set on ice over a larger bowl. Set a mesh strainer on top of the bowls. Set aside.

3 Reheat the milk and coffee mixture, on medium heat, until again hot and steamy (not boiling). In a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks together. Slowly pour the heated milk and coffee mixture into the egg yolks, whisking constantly so that the egg yolks are tempered by the warm milk, but not cooked by it. Scrape the warmed egg yolks back into the saucepan.

4 Stir the mixture constantly over medium heat with a heatproof, flat-bottomed spatula, scraping the bottom as you stir, until the mixture thickens and coats the spatula so that you can run your finger across the coating and have the coating not run. This can take about 10 minutes.

5 Pour the custard through the strainer and stir it into the cream. Press on the coffee beans in the strainer to extract as much of the coffee flavor as possible. Then discard the beans. Mix in the vanilla and finely ground coffee, and stir until cool.

6 Chill the mixture thoroughly in the refrigerator, then transfer to your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

Storing in cute mason jar optional.

This would be delicious for an apres-dinner dessert for Valentine’s Day. Even better in an Affogato.